Vostok Station

The Vostok Station (Russian Восток 'East' ) is a previously opened on December 16, 1957, Soviet, now Russian research station in Wilke country in East Antarctica. There was drilled jointly with France, among others, an ice core from the ice sheets of Antarctica, which produced statements about the climate conditions during the last 420,000 years.

Geographical location

The Vostok station is located 1287 km from the South Pole, 1260 km from the nearest coast and 1410 km inland from the nearest Mirny station ( main station ), very close to the pole of inaccessibility, but rather far from the Antarctic geomagnetic pole, the geomagnetic south pole. It lies on the ice above the Lake Vostok on 3488 m height.

Supply

The Vostok Station is powered by an annual trek from the past on the coast Mirny station via a untrodden snow slope with food and 100 to 130 tons of winter diesel. Until its abandonment in the 1990s also lying on the road station Komsomolskaya was supplied in this way.

Cold pole of the earth

In the Vostok station every now and then measured extremely low temperatures, for example: on August 24, 1960 -88.3 ° C, and July 21, 1983 -89.2 ° C. The latter currently represents the deepest meteorologically measured air temperature of the earth, which is why the station is also referred to as " cold pole of the earth."

For the August 10, 2010 -93.2 ° C were due to satellite observations calculated, but not meteorologically - with a ground-based station - measured. Because of the way this new value by the appropriate World Meteorological Organization has been explicitly rejected.